Did you know? Kolmeo means triangle – that’s owner, tenant and property manager together in harmony.

This pursuit of balance and harmony was central to the development of the brand strategy, which spanned brand personality, tone of voice, tagline, value propositions, a core brand narrative and elevator pitch. A lot of words go into a brand strategy, but one word really stood out from the rest – Joy.

Joy became Kolmeo’s brand essence; its core ingredient.

You’ll see this sense of joy in every piece of the brand identity. The vibrant brand mark with a hidden heart supported by the tagline "rent, own, manage, love" communicates the love of property, and quirky typographic details, a suite of playful patterns, icons, illustration and animations complete the identity system.

Kolmeo trusted us to extend our expertise to almost every corner of their brand, from designing launch collateral and signage, designing and developing a marketing site, and helping them to perfect UI for the app itself. The outcome is a flexible, holistic brand that is impactful and memorable.

The website

Liquorice was also asked to design and develop a marketing website to promote the Kolmeo apps, showcase the features and benefits, and to introduce clients to the organisation.

When we design a website, the user is always at the forefront of our minds. We believe a thorough UX process is critical to truly understanding their needs—research into the demographic, motivations and pain points of these users, as well as the development of personas, user journeys and prototype testing all play a role in crafting the best solution. We also conducted research to inform the design direction and functionality requirements. This groundwork provided a solid foundation for wireframing where we outline drafts of the site before progressing to high fidelity designs.

The “make it fun” approach

We aimed to mirror the joy and fun of the brand strategy by including interactive elements like the scrolling features module on the home page, and colourful hover & click states in the primary navigation. A subtle use of pattern, playful illustrations and unique animation techniques really helped to bring that joyful energy to the experience. This approach also helped to increase the level of engagement with often overlooked sections of the website, like the staff portraits with their playful shape overlays.

Kolmeo also trusted us to create content for the site, helping to ensure the brand was applied consistently across every touch point. Our witty, tongue-in-cheek approach to copywriting ensured the brand’s tone of voice shone through, while simplified mockups of the lovely app interface helped to highlight specific features and benefits. We even created an interactive pricing calculator to help users understand how the pricing structure works and determine which tier they fall under.

Technology stack: We used Wagtail as a headless CMS to feed an API which was consumed by a VueJS frontend.

App UI and components

Kolmeo's product team set out to develop a world-first app which reimagined the property management experience, with simple frontend functionality for tenants, property managers and owners, and a powerful backend system using AI, API integrations and customisable interfaces. To solidify their position as challengers in the property management space, Kolmeo needed to ensure their bold new brand and positioning was reflected in the product UI.

Our challenge was balancing the adventurousness of the brand with the need for usability and intuitiveness, pushing boundaries with technology and functionality, but never leaving users behind. Kolmeo trusted us to find that balance, to envision the app end-to-end, and to lead the way towards a unique solution.

By defining Kolmeo's design principles first, we were able to establish guidelines for applying the brand to the product. These design principles were lead by Kolmeo's three brand personality traits:

• Adventurous
• Passionate
• Imaginative

We created specific design goals, each nested under one of the three traits, and used them as the jumping-off point for all thinking and concept generation.

We looked at how we could apply colour, shape and language to the existing UI components, app and dashboard screens, adding personality without reinventing the wheel. We also looked at how we could simplify screens to make them more accessible to users. We collaborated with the Kolmeo design team throughout the process, ensuring the design recommendations would work with the product functionality.

We refreshed the UI by applying the new Kolmeo brand and design principles, as well as injecting personality with unique animation, illustration and pictograms. Lastly, we created digital style sheets within Figma which included iconography, buttons, typography, cards, components and more, which became a usable guide for Kolmeo's product team.

This process transformed the Kolmeo app, taking a generic property management application and creating an innovative product that resonates with the modern day property managers, owners and tenants.